[mythtv-users] VMWare on the backend. Viable solution?

[Martin Ravell]

Thank you all for your comments so far. Please keep 'em coming. 

 

In summary here are a few thoughts.

 

General consensus is that in order to use my PVR-350 I'd need to use PCI
Passthrough.

 

Support for PCI Passthrough is via a capability known as DV-t (at least on
Intel based systems). The boards that I have been looking at (Gigabyte) do
not seem to have this enabled. I have sent an inquiry off to Gigabyte to
confirm this and will post any response back to this list.

 

I may well be forced to use an Intel brand board to get this functionality.
This may not be a showstopper but it seems that support for DV-t is not
widely advertised which does strike me as a little odd. Will also keep an
eye out for VPro branded boards as this may be the same thing.

 

Xen may offer an alternative but my work usage dictates VMWare.

 

It seems that VMWare ESXi supports PCI Passthrough. Have not been able to
confirm VMWare Server. My original plan was a CentOS Host running several
VMWare virtual machines using VMWare Server. The Myth backend being one of
them. I'll post this info here as well when I get hold of it.

 

USB may be a decent alternative with a HD-PVR. I'm not familiar with this
product at the moment though. Will research. Would be a shame to
decommission the '350 as it has served me very faithfully for a long time
now.

 

I'd rather not setup a slave Mythbackend on the host itself. This strikes me
as a bit messy and overcomplicated. If I were to go towards this route it
would strike me that having the Host itself as the Mythbackend server would
be better. I do like the management, backup, snapshot etc banefits of having
the Mythbackend as a VMWare client though.

 

 

 

Regards

Marty

 

 

 

 

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